The best moment in “Neverland” — the meh musical about making “Peter Pan” that’s currently raining faux pixie dust on the Marcus Center — comes shortly before intermission, in an extended number called “Circus of Your Mind.”

“Peter Pan” creator J.M. Barrie (Will Ray) is facing his darkest hour. His producer (John Davidson) has lost faith in him. His fed-up wife (Janine DiVita) has left him for a Lord (Noah Plomgren). And he’s been banned from the home of the woman (Lael Van Keuren) and four boys he’s come to love.

Barrie whirls through a phantasmagoric underworld that captures the dark side of every circus, straddling that shadowy line between the magical and the tawdry. A world of play and a kingdom of despair. Neverland and Netherland.

Director Diane Paulus — a genius working with an ingenious creative team — combines striking choreography (Mia Michaels) and lighting (Kenneth Posner) to create an acid trip gone wrong. It’s all accompanied by the haunting and jangly music in Gary Barlow and Eliot Kennedy’s otherwise bland and ersatz score.

Here — and, regrettably, only here — what “Neverland” finds is a semblance of the nightmare within J.M. Barrie and his alternately dreamy and creepy story about channeling one’s inner child. But most of the time, this take-no-risks musical runs toward daylight, much like Peter without his shadow.

The problems begin at the top. Ray, a Kenosha native who only recently stepped into the role of Barrie, plays the way he sings: pleasantly. Always looking on the bright side of life, he gives us none of the broody melancholy that afflicted Barrie in real life and was conveyed by Johnny Depp in the 2004 film, from which this musical borrows heavily.

Nor is Ray alone in delivering relentlessly good cheer; the same goes for Van Keuren and her "American Idol" voice — big and brassy but without a hint of texture or feeling, of the sort you might expect from a woman who is dying.

The lovable munchkins — who, like the show’s dog, earned cheers less for what they did than who they embody — are similarly bathed in endless summer; that’s what happens when you’re stuck singing sticky lyrics like “you can be anything you wanna be/you can go anywhere you wanna see.” Despite a few pouts, even a bright-eyed Peter drowns in the treacly optimism.

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The surrounding players are exaggerated, one-note caricatures; Barrie’s wife is a superficial shrew, her lover is a fop, the grandmother is stern and matronly, the promoter has a perpetual glint in his eye and the actors are campy.

Paulus and her designers are so good that one nevertheless gets an occasional glimpse of Neverland; the ending they deliver here is truly magical, technically and aesthetically. But well before getting there, I was ready to walk Hook’s plank and abort a journey that finds little and risks less.

“Finding Neverland” continues through Sunday at the Marcus Center, 929 N. Water. For tickets, visit www.marcuscenter.org/. Read more about this production at tapmilwaukee.com.

PRODUCTION NOTES

Awful Book, Worse Jokes: The only decent lines in James Graham’s spectacularly awful book are those lifted from the movie. Bad as the book is, its jokes are worse, ranging from tasteless to offensive. The nadir involves one of Barrie’s actors answering a child’s question about whether he believes in fairies, by noting that he works in the theater and therefore sees them every day.

Life in the Theater: The Edwardian actors performing “Peter Pan” – as written in Graham’s book and seen in this production – present similarly shopworn stereotypes involving actors as preening narcissists who prance about saying “darling” to each other all day. Again, the contrast with the film is startling; there, the backstage drama suggests professionals who courageously tamped down their doubts and risked their reputations to birth a startlingly original piece of theater.

Arpeggios Rule: The Barlow and Kennedy score is big on endlessly repeated arpeggios, charged with melodrama and subject to the law of diminishing returns. It’s simple and unchallenging boy band music – sound and fury signifying little that’s boring on the page and worse on the stage.

Choreography: Another word on one of the highlights in this otherwise forgettable production: its choreography. I’ll concede that Michaels’ choreography may strike some as busy; it is, reflecting how hard Paulus and her designers work to keep things moving, visually and physically, so that we’re distracted from how weak this material is. But while she can’t quite make a silk purse from this sow’s ear, I was nevertheless impressed with how adeptly Michaels used the ensemble to signal the characters’ inner thoughts, from the teeming dream world of Netherland to the obstacles and doubts impeding Barrie in “Circus of Your Mind.”

The Eyes of a Child: “The world is so mysterious and wild, when you start to see it through the eyes of a child,” the producer says to his cast at one point. So stipulated. So why does this show demonstrate so little respect for how mysterious and wild – and dark – children can be?

Particularly in this country, we infantilize young people – treating them as so much simpler and singly dimensioned than they actually are. Whatever one thinks of Barrie, credit him with understanding how amazing children can be – and for recognizing that in many ways they’re smarter and see farther, with infinitely more imagination, than do adults. Here, they’re grossly sentimentalized. In a show that’s objectionable for so many reasons, this may be the biggest sin of all.